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The World Set Free Chapter 4 - The New Phase Part 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter four of the World Set Free by H. G. Wells.
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Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Adam Marcitich, June two
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Speaker 1: thousand nine, Alexandria, Virginia, The World Set Free by H. G. Wells,
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Speaker 1: Chapter the fourth the New Phase, Section one. The task
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Speaker 1: that lay before the Assembly of Brissago, viewed as we
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Speaker 1: may view it now from the clarifying standpoint of things accomplished,
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Speaker 1: was in its broad issues a simple one. Essentially, it
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Speaker 1: was to place social organization upon the new footing that
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Speaker 1: the swift, accelerated advance of human knowledge had rendered necessary.
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Speaker 1: The Council was gathered together with the of a salvage expedition,
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Speaker 1: and it was confronted with wreckage. But the wreckage was
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Speaker 1: irreparable wreckage, and the only possibilities of the case were
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Speaker 1: either the relapse of mankind to the agricultural barbarism from
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Speaker 1: which it had emerged so painfully, or the acceptance of
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Speaker 1: achieved science as the basis of a new social order.
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Speaker 1: The old tendencies of human nature, suspicion jealousy, particularism, and
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Speaker 1: belligerency were incompatible with the monstrous destructive power of the
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Speaker 1: new appliances of the inhuman logic of science had produced.
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Speaker 1: The equilibrium could be restored only by civilization destroying itself
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Speaker 1: down to a level at which modern apparatus could no
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Speaker 1: longer be produced, or by human nature adapting itself in
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Speaker 1: its institutions to the new conditions. It was for them
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Speaker 1: later alternative that the assembly existed. Sooner or later this
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Speaker 1: choice would have confronted mankind. The sudden development of atomic
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Speaker 1: science did but precipitate and render rapid a dramatic clash
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Speaker 1: between the new and the customary that had been gathering
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Speaker 1: since ever the first flint was chipped or the first
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Speaker 1: fire built together. From the day when man contrived himself
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Speaker 1: a tool and suffered another male to draw near him,
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Speaker 1: he ceased to be altogether a thing of instinct and
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Speaker 1: untroubled convictions. From that day forth, a widening breach can
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Speaker 1: be traced between his egotistical passions and the social need.
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Speaker 1: Slowly he adapted himself to the life of the homestead,
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Speaker 1: and his passionate impulses widened out to the demands of
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Speaker 1: the clan and the tribe, but widened though his impulses
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Speaker 1: might the latent hunter and wanderer, and wanderer in his imagination,
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Speaker 1: outstripped their development. He was never quite subdued to the soil,
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Speaker 1: nor quite tamed to the home. Everywhere it needed teaching,
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Speaker 1: and the priest to keep him within the bounds of
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Speaker 1: the plow life and the beast tending slowly. A vast
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Speaker 1: system of traditional imperatives superposed itself upon his instincts, imperatives
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Speaker 1: that were admirably fitted to make him that cultivator, that
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Speaker 1: cattle mincer, who was, for twice ten thousand years the
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Speaker 1: normal man, and unpremeditated, undesired, out of the accumulations of
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Speaker 1: his tilling, came civilization. Civilization was the agricultural surplus. It
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Speaker 1: appeared as trade and tracks and roads. It pushed boats
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Speaker 1: out upon the rivers, and presently invaded the sea and
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Speaker 1: within its primitive courts, within temples, grown rich and leisurely.
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Speaker 1: Amidst the gathering medley of the seaport towns, rose speculation
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Speaker 1: and philosophy and science, and the beginning of the new
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Speaker 1: order that has at last established itself as human life. Slowly,
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Speaker 1: at first as we traced it, and then, with an
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Speaker 1: accumulating velocity, the new powers were fabricated. Man as a
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Speaker 1: whole did not seek them, nor desire them. They were
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Speaker 1: thrust into his hand. For a time, men took up
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Speaker 1: and used these new things and the new powers, inadvertently
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Speaker 1: as they came to him, wrecking nothing of the consequences
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Speaker 1: for endless generations. Change led him very gently, But when
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Speaker 1: he had been led far enough, changed quickened to the pace.
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Speaker 1: It was with a series of shocks that he realized
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Speaker 1: at last that he was living the the old life
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Speaker 1: less and less, and a new life more and more. Already,
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Speaker 1: before the release of atomic energy, the tensions between the
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Speaker 1: old way of living and the new were intense. They
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Speaker 1: were far intenser than they had been even at the
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Speaker 1: collapse of the Roman imperial system. On the one hand
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Speaker 1: was the ancient life of the family and the small
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Speaker 1: community and the petty industry, and on the other was
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Speaker 1: a new life on a larger scale, with remoter horizons
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Speaker 1: and a strange sense of purpose. Already it was growing
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Speaker 1: clear that men must live on one side or the other.
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Speaker 1: One could not have had little tradespeople and syndicated businesses
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Speaker 1: in the same market sleeping carters and motor trolleys on
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Speaker 1: the same road, bows and arrows and aeroplane sharpshooters in
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Speaker 1: the same army, or illiterate peasant industries and power driven
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Speaker 1: factory in the same world, and still less it was
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Speaker 1: possible that one could have the ideas and ambitions, and
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Speaker 1: greed and jealousy of peasants equipped with the vast appliances
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Speaker 1: of the new age. If there had been no atomic
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Speaker 1: bombs to bring together most of the directing intelligence of
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Speaker 1: the world to that hasty conference at Bursago, there would
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Speaker 1: have still been extended, over great areas and a considerable
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Speaker 1: space of time, perhaps a less formal conference of responsible
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Speaker 1: and understanding people upon the perplexities of this worldwide opposition.
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Speaker 1: If the work of Holstone had been spread over centuries
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Speaker 1: and imparted to the world by imperceptible degrees, it would
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Speaker 1: nevertheless have made it necessary for men to take counsel
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Speaker 1: upon and set a plan for the future. Indeed, already
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Speaker 1: there had been a cumulating for one hundred years before
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Speaker 1: the crisis, a literature of foresight. There was a whole
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Speaker 1: mass of modern state scheming available for the conference to
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Speaker 1: go upon. These bombs did but accentuate and dramatize an
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Speaker 1: already developing problem Section two. This assembly was no leap
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Speaker 1: of exceptional minds and superintelligence into the control of affairs.
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Speaker 1: It was teachable. Its members trailed ideas with them to
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Speaker 1: the gathering. But these were the consequences of the moral
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Speaker 1: shock the bombs had given humanity, and there is no
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Speaker 1: reason for supposing its individual personalities were greatly above the average.
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Speaker 1: It would be possible to cite a thousand instances of
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Speaker 1: error and inefficiency in its proceedings due to the forgetfulness, irritability,
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Speaker 1: or fatigue of its members. Experimented considerably and blundered, often,
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Speaker 1: accepting Holston, whose gift was highly specialized. It is questionable
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Speaker 1: whether there was a single man of the first order
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Speaker 1: of human quality in the gathering, but it had a
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Speaker 1: modest fear of itself and a consequent directness that gave
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Speaker 1: it a general distinction. There was, of course a noble
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Speaker 1: simplicity about LeBlanc, But even of him, it may be
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Speaker 1: asked whether he was not rather good and honest minded
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Speaker 1: than in the fuller sense great the ex King, had
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Speaker 1: wisdom and a certain romantic dash. He was a man
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Speaker 1: among thousands even if he was not a man among millions.
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Speaker 1: But his memoirs, and indeed his decision to write memoirs
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Speaker 1: gave the quality of himself and his associates. The book
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Speaker 1: makes admirable but astonishing reading. Therein he takes the great
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Speaker 1: work the Council was doing for granted, as a little
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Speaker 1: child takes God. It is as if he had no
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Speaker 1: sense of it at all. He tells amusing trivialities about
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Speaker 1: his cousin Wilhelm and his secretary Fearman. He pokes fun
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Speaker 1: at the American President, who was indeed rather a little
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Speaker 1: accident of the political machine than a representative American, and
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Speaker 1: he gives a long description of how he was lost
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Speaker 1: for three days in the mountains in the company of
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Speaker 1: the only Japanese member, a loss that seems to have
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Speaker 1: caused no serious interruption of the work of the Council.
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Speaker 1: The Bursago Conference has been written about time after time
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Speaker 1: as though it were a gathering of the very flower
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Speaker 1: of humanity, perched up there by the freak or wisdom
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Speaker 1: of LeBlanc. It had a certain Olympian quality, and the
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Speaker 1: natural tendency of the human mind to be to elaborate
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Speaker 1: such a resemblance would have give us its members the
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Speaker 1: likenesses of gods. It would be equally reasonable to compare
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Speaker 1: it to one of those enforced meetings upon the mountaintops
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Speaker 1: that must have occurred in the opening phases of the deluge.
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Speaker 1: The strength of the Council lay not in itself, but
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Speaker 1: in the circumstances that had quickened its intelligence, dispelled its vanities,
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Speaker 1: and emancipated it from traditional ambitions and antagonisms. He was
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Speaker 1: stripped of the accumulation of centuries, a naked government with
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Speaker 1: all that freedom of action that nakedness affords, and its
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Speaker 1: problems were set before it with a plainness that was
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Speaker 1: out of all comparison with the complicated and perplexing intimations
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Speaker 1: of the former time. Section three. The world on which
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Speaker 1: the Council looked didn't neded present a task quite sufficiently
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Speaker 1: immense and altogether too urgent for any wanton indulgence in
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Speaker 1: internal dissension. It may be interesting to sketch in a
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Speaker 1: few phrases the condition of mankind at the close of
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Speaker 1: the period of warring states, in the year of crisis
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Speaker 1: that followed the release of atomic power. It was a
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Speaker 1: world extraordinarily limited when one measures it by later standards,
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Speaker 1: and it was now in a state of the direst
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Speaker 1: confusion and distress. It must be remembered that at this
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Speaker 1: time men had still to spread into enormous areas of
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Speaker 1: the land surface of the globe. There were vast mountain wildernesses,
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Speaker 1: forest wildernesses, sandy deserts, and foreign lands. Men still clung
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Speaker 1: closely to water and arable soil in temperate or subtropic climates.
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Speaker 1: They lived abundantly only river valleys, and all their great
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Speaker 1: cities had grown upon large navigable rivers or close to
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Speaker 1: ports upon the sea over great areas. Even of this
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Speaker 1: suitable land, flies and mosquitoes armed with infection, had so
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Speaker 1: far defeated human invasion, and under their protection the virgin
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Speaker 1: forests remained untouched. Indeed, the whole world, even in its
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Speaker 1: most crowded districts, was filthy with flies and swarming with
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Speaker 1: needless insect life, to an extent which is now almost incredible.
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Speaker 1: A population map of the world in nineteen fifty would
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Speaker 1: have followed seashore and river courses so closely in its
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Speaker 1: darker shading as to give an impression that Homo sapiens
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Speaker 1: was an amphibious animal. His roads and railways lay also
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Speaker 1: along the lower contours. Only here and there, to pierce
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Speaker 1: some mountain barrier, or reached some holiday resort, did they
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Speaker 1: clamber above three thousand feet and across the ocean. His
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Speaker 1: traffic passed in definite lines. There were hundreds of thousands
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Speaker 1: of square miles of ocean, no ship ever traversed, except
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Speaker 1: by mischance into the mysteries of the solid globe under
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Speaker 1: his feet. He had not yet pierced for five miles,
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Speaker 1: and it was still not forty years since, with a
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Speaker 1: tragic pertinacity, he had climbed to the poles of the Earth.
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Speaker 1: The limitless mineral wealth of the Arctic and Antarctic circles
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Speaker 1: was still buried beneath vast accumulations of immemorial ice, and
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Speaker 1: the secret riches of the inner zones of the crust
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Speaker 1: were untapped and indeed unsuspected. The higher mountain regions were
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Speaker 1: known only to a sprinkling of guide led climbers and
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Speaker 1: the frequenters of a few gaunt hotels. And the vast
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Speaker 1: rainless belts of land that lay across continental masses from
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Speaker 1: Gobi to Sahara, and along the backbone of America, with
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Speaker 1: their perfect air, their daily baths of blazing sunshine, their
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Speaker 1: nights of cool serenity and glowing stars, and their reservoirs
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Speaker 1: of deep lying water, where as yet only desolations of
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Speaker 1: fear and death to the common imagination. And now under
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Speaker 1: the shock of the atomic bombs, the great masses of
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Speaker 1: population which had gathered into the enormous dingy town centers
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Speaker 1: of that period were dispossessed and scattered disastrously over the
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Speaker 1: surrounding rural areas. It was as if some brutal force,
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Speaker 1: grown impatient at last at man's blindness, had, with the
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Speaker 1: deliberate intention of a rearrangement of population upon more wholesome lines,
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Speaker 1: shaken the world. The great industrial regions and the large
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Speaker 1: cities that had escaped the bombs were, because of their
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Speaker 1: complete economic collapse, in almost as tragic a plight as
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Speaker 1: those that blazed, and the countryside was disordered by a
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Speaker 1: multitude of wandering and lawless strangers in some parts of
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Speaker 1: the world, famine rage. In many regions, there was plague.
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Speaker 1: The plains of North India, which had become more and
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Speaker 1: more dependent for the general welfare on the railways, and
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Speaker 1: that great system of irrigation canals which the malignant section
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Speaker 1: of the Patriots had destroyed, were in a state of
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Speaker 1: peculiar distress. Whole villages lay dead together, no man heating,
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Speaker 1: and the very tigers and panthers that preyed upon the
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Speaker 1: emaciated survivors crawled back, infected into the jungle to perish.
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Speaker 1: Large areas of China were a prey to brigand bands.
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Speaker 1: It is a remarkable thing that no complete contemporary account
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Speaker 1: of the explosion of the atomic bombs survives. There are,
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Speaker 1: of course, innumerable illusions and partial records, and it is
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Speaker 1: from these that subsequent ages must pierce together the image
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Speaker 1: of these devastations. The phenomena, it must be remembered, changed
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Speaker 1: greatly from day to day, and even from hour to hour,
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Speaker 1: as the exploding bomb shifted its position, threw off fragments,
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Speaker 1: or came into contact with water or a fresh texture
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Speaker 1: of soil. Barney, who came within forty miles of Paris
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Speaker 1: early in October, is concerned chiefly with his account of
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Speaker 1: the social confusion of the countryside and the problems of
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Speaker 1: his command. But he speaks of heaped cloud masses of
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Speaker 1: steam all along the sty to the southwest, and of
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Speaker 1: a red glare beneath these. At night, parts of Paris
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Speaker 1: were still burning, and numbers of people were camped in
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Speaker 1: the fields, even at this distance, watching over treasured heaps
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Speaker 1: of salvaged lute. He speaks too, of the distant rumbling
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Speaker 1: of the explosion, like trains going over iron bridges. The
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Speaker 1: other descriptions agree with this. They all speak of the
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Speaker 1: continuous reverberations, or of the thuttering and hammering, or some
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Speaker 1: such phrase, and they all testify to a huge pall
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Speaker 1: of steam, from which rain would fall suddenly in torrents,
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Speaker 1: and amidst which lightning played. Dawning Nearer to Paris, an
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Speaker 1: observer would have found the salvage camps increasing in number
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Speaker 1: and blocking up the villages, and large numbers of people,
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Speaker 1: all starving and ailing, camping under improvised tents because there
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Speaker 1: was no place for them to go. The sky became
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Speaker 1: more and more densely overcast, until at last it blotted
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Speaker 1: out the light of day and left nothing but a dull,
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Speaker 1: red glare, extraordinarily depressing to the spirit. In this dull glare,
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Speaker 1: great numbers of people were still living, clinging to their houses,
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Speaker 1: and in many cases subsisting in a state of partial
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Speaker 1: famine upon the produce in their gardens and the stores
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Speaker 1: in the shops of the provision dealers. Coming in still closer,
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Speaker 1: the investigator would have reached the police cordon, which was
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Speaker 1: trying to check the desperate enterprise of those who would
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Speaker 1: return to their homes or rescue their more valuable possessions
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Speaker 1: within the zone of imminent danger. That zone was rather arbitrary,
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Speaker 1: rarely define. If our spectator could have gotten permission to
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Speaker 1: enter it, he would have entered also a zone of uproar,
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Speaker 1: a zone of perpetual thunderings, lit by a strange purplish
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Speaker 1: red light, and quivering and swaying with the incessant explosion
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Speaker 1: of the radioactive substance. Whole blocks of buildings were alight
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Speaker 1: and burning fiercely, the trembling, ragged flames looking pale and
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Speaker 1: ghastly and attenuated in comparison with the full bodied crimson
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Speaker 1: glare beyond the shells of other edifices already burnt rows
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Speaker 1: pierced by rows of window sockets against the red lit mist.
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Speaker 1: Every step farther would have been as dangerous as a
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Speaker 1: descent within the crater of an active volcano. These spinning,
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Speaker 1: boiling bomb centers would shift or break unexpectedly into new regions.
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Speaker 1: New fragments of earth or drain or masonry sudden caught
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Speaker 1: by a jet of disruptive force might come flying by
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Speaker 1: the explorer's head or the ground, yon a fiery grave
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Speaker 1: beneath his feet. Few who had ventured into these areas
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Speaker 1: of destruction and survived attempted any repetition of their experiences.
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Speaker 1: There are stories of puffs of luminous radioactive vapor drifting
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Speaker 1: sometimes scores of miles from the bomb center, and killing
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Speaker 1: and scorching all they overtook. At first, the conflagrations from
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Speaker 1: the Paris center spread westward halfway to the sea. Moreover,
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Speaker 1: the air in this infernal inner circle of red lit
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Speaker 1: ruins had a peculiar dryness, in a blistering quality, so
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Speaker 1: that it set up a soreness of the skin and
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Speaker 1: lungs that was very difficult to heal. Such was the
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Speaker 1: last state of Paris, and such on a larger scale
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Speaker 1: was the condition of affairs in Chicago. And the same
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Speaker 1: fate had overtaken Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo, the eastern half of London, Tolon, Kiel,
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Speaker 1: and two hundred and eighteen other centers of population or armament.
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Speaker 1: Each was a flaming center of radiant destruction that only
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Speaker 1: time could quench. That indeed, in many instances, time has
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Speaker 1: still to quench to this day, though indeed with a
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Speaker 1: constantly diminishing uproar and vigor. These explosions continue. In the
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Speaker 1: map of nearly every country of the world, three or
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Speaker 1: four or more red circles a score of miles in
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Speaker 1: diameter mark the position of the dying atomic bombs and
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Speaker 1: the death areas that men have been forced to abandon
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Speaker 1: around them. Within these are perished museums, cathedrals, palaces, libraries,
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Speaker 1: galleries of masterpieces, and a vast accumulation of human achievement
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Speaker 1: whose charred remains lie buried, a legacy of curious material
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Speaker 1: that only future generations may hope to examine. Section four.
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Speaker 1: The state of mind of the dispossessed urban population, which
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Speaker 1: swarmed and perished so abundantly over the countryside during the
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Speaker 1: dark days of the autumnal months that followed the last war,
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Speaker 1: was one of blank despair. Barnay gives sketch after sketch
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Speaker 1: of groups of these people cramped among the vineyards of
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Speaker 1: Champagne as he saw them during his period of service
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Speaker 1: with the Army of Pacification. There was, for example, that
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Speaker 1: man Milliner, who came out from a field beside the
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Speaker 1: road that rises up eastward out of Epernay, and asks
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Speaker 1: how things were going in Paris. He was, says Barney,
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Speaker 1: a round faced man, dressed very neatly in black, so
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Speaker 1: neatly that it was amazing to discover. He was living
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Speaker 1: close at hand in a tent made of carpets, and
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Speaker 1: he had an urbane but insistent manner, a carefully trimmed
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Speaker 1: mustache and beard, expressive eyebrows, and hair very neatly brushed.
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Speaker 1: No one goes into Paris, said Barney. But monsieur, that
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Speaker 1: is very unenterprising. The man by the wayside submitted. The
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Speaker 1: danger is too great. The radiations eat into people's skins,
23:50
Speaker 1: the eyebrows protested. But is nothing to be done. Nothing
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Speaker 1: can be done, But monsieur, it is extraordinarily inconvenient. This
24:03
Speaker 1: living in exile and waiting. My wife and little boy
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Speaker 1: suffer extremely There is a lack of amenity, and the
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Speaker 1: season advances. I say nothing of the expense and difficulty
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Speaker 1: in obtaining provisions. When does Monsieur think that something will
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Speaker 1: be done to render Paris possible. Barney considered his interlocutor.
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Speaker 1: I'm told, said Barney, that Paris is not likely to
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Speaker 1: be possible again for several generations. Oh but this is preposterous. Consider, monsieur,
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Speaker 1: what are people like ourselves to do? In the meanwhile?
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Speaker 1: I am a costumer. All my connections and interests, above all,
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Speaker 1: my style demand Paris. Barney considered the sky from which
24:59
Speaker 1: a light rang was beginning to fall, the wide fields
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Speaker 1: about them, from which the harvest had been taken, the
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Speaker 1: trim poplars by the wayside. Naturally, he agreed, you want
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Speaker 1: to go to Paris. But Paris is over over finished.
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Speaker 1: But then, monsieur, what is to become of me? Barney
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Speaker 1: turned his face westward, whither the white road led? Where else,
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Speaker 1: for example, may I hope to find opportunity? Barney made
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Speaker 1: no reply. Perhaps on the riviera, or at some such
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Speaker 1: place as Hamburg, or some plague. Perhaps all that, said Barney,
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Speaker 1: excepting for the first time facts that had lain evident
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Speaker 1: in his mind for weeks. All that must be over too.
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Speaker 1: There was a pause. Then the voice beside him broke out.
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Speaker 1: But Monsieur, it is impossible. It leaves nothing, No, not
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Speaker 1: very much. One cannot suddenly begin to grow potatoes. It
26:18
Speaker 1: would be good if Monsieur could bring himself to the
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Speaker 1: life of a peasant and my wife. You do not
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Speaker 1: know the distinguished delicacy of my wife, a refined helplessness,
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Speaker 1: a peculiar dependent charm, like some slender tropical creeper with
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Speaker 1: great white flowers. But all this is foolish talk. It
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Speaker 1: is impossible that Paris, which has survived so many misfortunes,
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Speaker 1: should not presently revive. I do not think it will
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Speaker 1: ever revive. Paris is finished. London too. I am told
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Speaker 1: Berlin all the great capitals were stricken. But Monsieur must
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Speaker 1: permit me to differ. It is so, it is impossible.
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Speaker 1: Civilizations do not end in this manner. Mankind will insist
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Speaker 1: on Paris. On Paris, Monsieur, you might as well hope
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Speaker 1: to go down the Maelstrom and resume business there. I
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Speaker 1: am content, Monsieur, with my own faith. The winter comes on.
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Speaker 1: Would not Monsieur be wiser to seek a house farther
27:34
Speaker 1: from Paris? No, monsieur, but it is not possible, monsieur.
27:40
Speaker 1: What you say and you are under a tremendous mistake. Indeed,
27:45
Speaker 1: you are in error. I ask merely for information. When
27:50
Speaker 1: I last saw him, said Barney, he was standing under
27:55
Speaker 1: the signpost at the crest of the hill, gazing wistfully.
27:59
Speaker 1: Yet it's seem to me a little doubtfully now towards Paris,
28:04
Speaker 1: and altogether heedless of a drizzling rain that was wetting him.
28:07
Speaker 1: Through and through section five, this effect of childus may
28:17
Speaker 1: of a doom, as yet imperfectly apprehended, deepens as Barney's
28:22
Speaker 1: record passes on to tell of the approach of winter.
28:26
Speaker 1: It was too much for the great mass of those
28:28
Speaker 1: unwilling and incompetent nomads to realize that an age had ended,
28:34
Speaker 1: that the old help and guidance existed no longer, that
28:38
Speaker 1: times would not mend again. However patiently they held out.
28:42
Speaker 1: They were still, in many cases looking to Paris when
28:46
Speaker 1: the first snowflakes of that pitiless January came swirling about them.
28:51
Speaker 1: The story grows grimmer, if it is less monstrously tragic.
28:56
Speaker 1: After Barnay's return to England. It is, if anything harder.
29:02
Speaker 1: England was a spectacle of fear, embittered householders hiding food,
29:07
Speaker 1: crushing out robbery, driving the starving wanderers from every faltering
29:13
Speaker 1: place upon the roads, lest they should die inconveniently and
29:17
Speaker 1: reproachfully on the doorsteps of those who had failed to
29:20
Speaker 1: urge them onward. The remnants of the British troops left
29:25
Speaker 1: France finally in March, after urgent representations from the provisional
29:31
Speaker 1: government at Orleans, thought they could be supported no longer.
29:36
Speaker 1: They seem to have been a fairly well behaved, but
29:39
Speaker 1: highly parasitic force throughout, though Barney is clearly of opinion
29:45
Speaker 1: that they did much to suppress sporadic brigandage and maintain
29:50
Speaker 1: social order. He came home to a famine stricken country,
29:55
Speaker 1: and his picture of the England of that spring is
29:58
Speaker 1: one of miserable patients and desperate expedients. The country was
30:03
Speaker 1: suffering much more than France because of the cessation of
30:07
Speaker 1: the overseas supplies on which it had hitherto relied. His
30:12
Speaker 1: troops were given bread, dried fish, and boiled nettles at Dover,
30:17
Speaker 1: and marched inland to Ashford and paid off. On the
30:22
Speaker 1: way thither they saw four men hanging from the telegraph
30:26
Speaker 1: posts by the roadside, who had been hung for stealing swedes.
30:32
Speaker 1: The labor refuges of Kent, he discovered, were feeding their
30:36
Speaker 1: crowds of casual wanderers unbred into which clay and sawdust
30:41
Speaker 1: had been mixed. In Surrey, there was a shortage of
30:45
Speaker 1: even such fare as that he himself struck across country
30:50
Speaker 1: to Winchester, fearing to approach the bomb poisoned district round London.
30:56
Speaker 1: And at Winchester he had the luck to be taken
30:59
Speaker 1: on as one of the wireless assistants at the central
31:02
Speaker 1: station and given regular rations. The station stood in a
31:08
Speaker 1: commanding position on the chalk hill that overlooks the town
31:12
Speaker 1: from the east. Thence he must have assisted in the
31:16
Speaker 1: transmission of the endless cipher messages that preceded the gathering
31:21
Speaker 1: at Bursago. And there it was that the Brisago proclamation
31:26
Speaker 1: of the end of the war and the establishment of
31:29
Speaker 1: a world government came under his hands. He was feeling
31:33
Speaker 1: ill and apathetic that day, and he did not realize
31:37
Speaker 1: what it was he was transcribing. He did it mechanically
31:41
Speaker 1: as a part of his tedious duty. Afterwards, there came
31:46
Speaker 1: a rush of messages arising out of the declaration that
31:50
Speaker 1: strained him very much, and in the evening. When he
31:53
Speaker 1: was relieved, he ate his scanty supper and then went
31:57
Speaker 1: out upon the little balcony before the star to smoke
32:02
Speaker 1: and rest his brains. After this sudden and yet inexplicable
32:06
Speaker 1: press of duty. It was a very beautiful still evening.
32:12
Speaker 1: He fell talking to a fellow operator, and for the
32:15
Speaker 1: first time, he declares, I began to understand what it
32:20
Speaker 1: was all about. I began to see just what enormous
32:25
Speaker 1: issues had been under my hands for the past four hours.
32:29
Speaker 1: But I became incredulous after my first stimulation. This is
32:34
Speaker 1: some sort of buncum, I said, very sagely. My colleague
32:40
Speaker 1: was more hopeful. It means an end to bomb throwing
32:44
Speaker 1: in destruction, he said. It means that presently corn will
32:49
Speaker 1: come from America. Who is going to send corn when
32:53
Speaker 1: there is no more value in money, I asked. Suddenly
32:58
Speaker 1: we were startled by a clashing from the town below.
33:03
Speaker 1: The cathedral bells, which had been silent ever since I
33:06
Speaker 1: had come into the district, were beginning with a sort
33:10
Speaker 1: of rheumatic difficulty to ring. Presently, they warmed a little
33:15
Speaker 1: to the work, and we realized what was going on.
33:20
Speaker 1: They were ringing appeal we listened with an unbelieving astonishment,
33:26
Speaker 1: and looking into each other's yellow faces. They mean it,
33:32
Speaker 1: said my colleague. But what can they do now, I asked,
33:39
Speaker 1: Everything is broken down, And on that sentence, with an
33:45
Speaker 1: unexpected artistry, Barney abruptly ends his story section six. From
33:54
Speaker 1: the first, the new government handled affairs with a certain
33:58
Speaker 1: greatness of spirit. Indeed, it was inevitable that they should
34:03
Speaker 1: act greatly. From the first. They had to see the
34:06
Speaker 1: round globe as one problem. It was impossible any longer
34:11
Speaker 1: to deal with it piece by piece. They had to
34:14
Speaker 1: secure it universally from any fresh outbreak of atomic destruction,
34:20
Speaker 1: and they had to ensure a permanent and universal pacification.
34:25
Speaker 1: On this capacity to grasp and wheel the whole round globe,
34:29
Speaker 1: their existence depended. There was no scope for any further performance.
34:36
Speaker 1: So soon as the seizure of the existing supplies of
34:39
Speaker 1: atomic ammunition and the apparatus for synthesizing Carolinum was assured,
34:46
Speaker 1: the disbanding or social utilization of the various masses of
34:50
Speaker 1: troops still under arms had to be arranged. The salvation
34:55
Speaker 1: of the year's harvests, and the feeding, housing, and employment
35:00
Speaker 1: of the drifting millions of homeless people in Canada, in
35:05
Speaker 1: South America and Asiatic Russia. There were vast accumulations of
35:11
Speaker 1: provision that was immovable only because of the breakdown of
35:16
Speaker 1: the monetary and credit systems. These had to be brought
35:20
Speaker 1: into the famine districts very speedily if entire depopulation was
35:25
Speaker 1: to be avoided, and their transportation and the revival of
35:29
Speaker 1: communications generally absorbed a certain proportion of the soldiery and
35:34
Speaker 1: more able unemployed. The task of housing assumed gigantic dimensions,
35:40
Speaker 1: and from building camps the Housing Committee of the Council
35:44
Speaker 1: speedily passed to constructions of a more permanent type. They
35:49
Speaker 1: found far less friction than might have been expected in
35:52
Speaker 1: turning the loose population on their hands to these things.
35:57
Speaker 1: People were extraordinarily tamed by the year of suffering and death.
36:02
Speaker 1: They were disillusioned of their traditions, bereft of once obstinate prejudices.
36:09
Speaker 1: They felt foreign in a strange world, and ready to
36:12
Speaker 1: follow any confident leadership. The orders of the new government
36:17
Speaker 1: came with the best of all credentials. Rations. The people
36:22
Speaker 1: everywhere were easy to control. One of the old labor
36:25
Speaker 1: experts who had survived until the new time witnesses as
36:30
Speaker 1: gangs of emigrant workers in a new land. And now
36:34
Speaker 1: it was that the social possibilities of the atomic energy
36:38
Speaker 1: began to appear. The new machinery that had come into
36:42
Speaker 1: existence before the last Wars increased and multiplied, and the
36:47
Speaker 1: Council found itself not only with millions of hands at
36:51
Speaker 1: its disposal, but with power and apparatus that made its
36:55
Speaker 1: first conceptions of the work it had to do seem
36:59
Speaker 1: pitifully to The camps that were planned in iron and
37:03
Speaker 1: deal were built in stone and brass. The roads that
37:08
Speaker 1: were to have been mere iron tracts became spacious ways
37:12
Speaker 1: that insisted upon architecture. The cultivations of foodstuffs that were
37:18
Speaker 1: to have supplied emergency rations were presently with synthesizers, fertilizers,
37:25
Speaker 1: actinic light, and scientific direction in excess of every human need.
37:32
Speaker 1: The government had begun with the idea of temporarily reconstituting
37:36
Speaker 1: the social and economic system that it prevailed before the
37:40
Speaker 1: first coming of the atomic engine, because it was to
37:44
Speaker 1: this system that the ideas and habits of the great
37:47
Speaker 1: mass of the world's dispossessed population was adapted. Subsequent rearrangement
37:54
Speaker 1: it had hoped to leave to its successors, whoever they
37:58
Speaker 1: might be. But this, it became more and more manifest,
38:03
Speaker 1: was absolutely impossible. As well. Might the Council have proposed
38:08
Speaker 1: a revival of slavery. The capitalist system had already been
38:13
Speaker 1: smashed beyond repair by the onset of limitless golden energy.
38:19
Speaker 1: It fell to pieces at the first endeavor to stand
38:22
Speaker 1: it up again. Already before the war, half of the
38:26
Speaker 1: industrial class had been out of work. The attempt to
38:30
Speaker 1: put them back into wages. Employment on the old lions
38:34
Speaker 1: was feudile from the onset. The absolute shattering of the
38:38
Speaker 1: currency system alone would have been sufficient to prevent that,
38:43
Speaker 1: and it was necessary therefore to take over the housing, feeding,
38:47
Speaker 1: and clothing of this worldwide multitude without exacting any return
38:52
Speaker 1: in labor whatever. In a little while, the mere absence
38:57
Speaker 1: of occupation for so great a multitude of people everywhere
39:01
Speaker 1: became an evident social danger, and the government was obliged
39:06
Speaker 1: to resort to such devices as simple decorative work in
39:10
Speaker 1: wood and stone, the manufacture of hand woven textiles, fruit growing,
39:16
Speaker 1: flower growing, and landscape gardening on a grand scale, to
39:21
Speaker 1: keep the less adaptable out of mischief, and of paying
39:25
Speaker 1: wages to the younger adults for attendance at school that
39:29
Speaker 1: would equip them to use the new atomic machinery. So,
39:33
Speaker 1: quite insensibly, the Council drifted into a complete reorganization of
39:39
Speaker 1: urban and industrial life, and indeed of the entire social system.
39:45
Speaker 1: Ideas that are unhampered by political intrigue or financial considerations
39:52
Speaker 1: have a sweeping way with them, And before a year
39:55
Speaker 1: was out, the records of the Council show clearly that
39:59
Speaker 1: it was, to its enormous opportunity, and partly through its
40:04
Speaker 1: own direct control and partly through a series of specific committees,
40:09
Speaker 1: it was planning a new common social order for the
40:13
Speaker 1: entire population of the earth. There can be no real
40:17
Speaker 1: social stability or any general human happiness. While large areas
40:23
Speaker 1: of the world and large classes of people are in
40:26
Speaker 1: a phase of civilization different from the prevailing mass, it
40:30
Speaker 1: is impossible now to have great blocks of population misunderstanding
40:35
Speaker 1: the generally accepted social purpose, or at an economic disadvantage
40:41
Speaker 1: to the rest. So the Council expressed its conception of
40:45
Speaker 1: the problem it had to solve. The peasants, the field
40:49
Speaker 1: worker and all barbaric cultivators were at an economic disadvantage
40:55
Speaker 1: to the more mobile and educated classes and the logic
40:59
Speaker 1: of the situation compelled the Council to take up systematically
41:04
Speaker 1: the supersession of this stratum by a more efficient organization
41:08
Speaker 1: of production. It developed a scheme for the progressive establishment
41:15
Speaker 1: throughout the world of the modern system in agriculture, a
41:19
Speaker 1: system that should give the full advantages of a civilized
41:23
Speaker 1: life to every agricultural worker, and this replacement has been
41:28
Speaker 1: going on right up to the present day. The central
41:31
Speaker 1: idea of the modern system is a substitution of cultivating
41:36
Speaker 1: guilds for the individual cultivator and for cottage and village
41:41
Speaker 1: life altogether. These guilds are associations of men and women
41:47
Speaker 1: who take over areas of arable or pasture land and
41:52
Speaker 1: make themselves responsible for a certain average produce. They are
41:57
Speaker 1: bodies small enough as a rule to be run on
42:00
Speaker 1: a strictly democratic basis, and large enough to supply all
42:04
Speaker 1: the labor, except for a certain assistance from townspeople during
42:09
Speaker 1: the harvest needed upon the land farm. They have watchers,
42:14
Speaker 1: bungalows or chalets on the ground cultivated, but the ease
42:19
Speaker 1: and costlessness of modern locomotion enables them to maintain a
42:23
Speaker 1: group of residences in the nearest town with a common
42:27
Speaker 1: dining room and clubhouse, and usually also a guild house
42:31
Speaker 1: in the national or provincial capital. Already this system has
42:37
Speaker 1: abolished a distinctively rustic population throughout vast areas of the
42:42
Speaker 1: old world, where it has prevailed immemorially, that shy, unstimulated
42:50
Speaker 1: life of the lonely hovel, the narrow scandals and petty
42:54
Speaker 1: spies and persecutions of the small village. That hoarding half
42:59
Speaker 1: in inanimate existence, away from books, thought or social participation,
43:06
Speaker 1: and in constant contact with cattle, pigs, poultry, and their excrement,
43:12
Speaker 1: is passing away out of human experience. In a little
43:16
Speaker 1: while it will be gone altogether. In the nineteenth century,
43:21
Speaker 1: it had already ceased to be a necessary human state,
43:25
Speaker 1: and only the absence of any collective intelligence and an
43:29
Speaker 1: imagine need for tough and unintelligent soldiers and for a
43:33
Speaker 1: prolific class at a low level, prevented its systematic replacement.
43:38
Speaker 1: At that time, and while this settlement of the country
43:43
Speaker 1: was in progress, the urban camps of the first phase
43:46
Speaker 1: of the Council's activities were rapidly developing, partly through the
43:51
Speaker 1: inherent forces of the situation and partly through the Council's
43:56
Speaker 1: direction into a modern type of town Section seven. It
44:09
Speaker 1: is characteristic of the manner in which large enterprises forced
44:13
Speaker 1: themselves upon the Bursago Council that it was not until
44:17
Speaker 1: the end of the first year of their administration, and
44:20
Speaker 1: then only with extreme reluctance, that they would take up
44:23
Speaker 1: the manifest need for a lingua francua for the world.
44:28
Speaker 1: They seemed to have given little attention to the various
44:31
Speaker 1: theoretical universal languages which were proposed to them. They wished
44:37
Speaker 1: to give as little troubled to hasty and simple people
44:41
Speaker 1: as possible, and the worldwide alstribution of English gave them
44:46
Speaker 1: a bias for it from the beginning. The extreme simplicity
44:51
Speaker 1: of its grammar was also in its favor. It was
44:55
Speaker 1: not without some sacrifices that the English speaking peoples were
44:59
Speaker 1: per permitted the satisfaction of hearing their speech used universally.
45:04
Speaker 1: The language was shorn of a number of grammatical peculiarities.
45:09
Speaker 1: The distinctive forms for the subjunctive mood, for example, and
45:14
Speaker 1: most of its irregular plurals were abolished. Its spelling was
45:18
Speaker 1: systematized and adopted to the vowel sounds in use upon
45:23
Speaker 1: the continent of Europe, and a process of incorporating foreign
45:28
Speaker 1: nouns and verbs commenced that speedily reached enormous proportions. Within
45:34
Speaker 1: ten years from the establishment of the World Republic, the
45:38
Speaker 1: new English dictionary had swelled to include a vocabulary of
45:42
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand words, and a man of
45:46
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred would have found considerable difficulty in reading an
45:51
Speaker 1: ordinary newspaper. On the other hand, the men of a
45:55
Speaker 1: new time could still appreciate the older English literature. Certain
46:00
Speaker 1: minor acts of uniformity accompanied this larger one. The idea
46:06
Speaker 1: of a common understanding and a general simplification of intercourse,
46:11
Speaker 1: once it was accepted, led very naturally to the universal
46:15
Speaker 1: establishment of the metric system of weights and measures, and
46:19
Speaker 1: to the disappearance of the various makeshift calendars that had
46:24
Speaker 1: hitherto confused chronology. The year was divided into thirteen months
46:29
Speaker 1: of four weeks each, and New Year's Day and Leap
46:33
Speaker 1: Year's Day were made holidays and did not count at
46:37
Speaker 1: all in the ordinary week. So the weeks and months
46:40
Speaker 1: were brought into correspondence, and moreover, as the King put
46:45
Speaker 1: it to Fearman, it was decided to nail down easter.
46:50
Speaker 1: In these matters, as in so many matters, the new
46:54
Speaker 1: civilization came as a simplification of ancient complications. The history
47:00
Speaker 1: of the calendar throughout the world is a history of
47:04
Speaker 1: inadequate adjustments, of attempts to fix seed time and midwinter
47:09
Speaker 1: that go back into the very beginning of human society.
47:14
Speaker 1: And this final rectification had a symbolic value quite beyond
47:19
Speaker 1: its practical convenience. But the Council would have no rash
47:23
Speaker 1: nor harsh innovations, no strange names for the months, and
47:29
Speaker 1: no alteration in the numbering of the years. The world
47:33
Speaker 1: had already been put upon one universal monetary basis. For
47:39
Speaker 1: some months after the accession of the Council, the world's
47:43
Speaker 1: affairs had been carried on without any sound currency at all.
47:48
Speaker 1: Over great regions money was still in use, but with
47:52
Speaker 1: the most extravagant variations in price and the most disconcerting
47:57
Speaker 1: fluctuations of public confidence. The ancient rarity of gold upon
48:02
Speaker 1: which the entire system rested was gone. Gold was now
48:07
Speaker 1: a waste product in the release of atomic energy, and
48:10
Speaker 1: it was plain that no metal could be the basis
48:13
Speaker 1: of the monetary system again. Henceforth, all coins must be
48:18
Speaker 1: token coins. Yet the whole world was accustomed to metallic money.
48:24
Speaker 1: In a vast proportion of existing human relationships had grown
48:28
Speaker 1: upon a cash basis and were almost inconceivable without that
48:33
Speaker 1: convenient liquidating factor. It seemed absolutely necessary to the life
48:40
Speaker 1: of the social organization to have some sort of currency,
48:44
Speaker 1: and the Council had therefore to discover some real value
48:49
Speaker 1: upon which to rest it. Various such apparently stable values
48:54
Speaker 1: as land and hours of work were considered. Ultimately, the government,
49:00
Speaker 1: which was now in possession of most of the supplies
49:04
Speaker 1: of energy releasing material, fixed a certain number of units
49:08
Speaker 1: of energy as the value of a gold sovereign, declared
49:13
Speaker 1: a sovereign to be worth exactly twenty marks, twenty five
49:17
Speaker 1: francs five dollars, and so forth with the other current
49:22
Speaker 1: units of the world, and undertook under various qualifications and
49:28
Speaker 1: conditions to deliver energy upon demand as payment for every
49:33
Speaker 1: sovereign presented on the whole. This worked satisfactorily. They saved
49:40
Speaker 1: the face of the pound sterling coin was rehabilitated, and
49:45
Speaker 1: after a phase of price fluctuations, began to settle down
49:49
Speaker 1: to definite equivalents and uses again with names and everyday
49:55
Speaker 1: values familiar to the common run of people. Section eight.
50:04
Speaker 1: As the Brissago Council came to realize that what it
50:08
Speaker 1: had supposed to be temporary camps of refugees were rapidly
50:13
Speaker 1: developing into great towns of a new type, and that
50:16
Speaker 1: it was remolding the world in spite of itself, it
50:20
Speaker 1: decided to place this work of redistributing the non agricultural
50:24
Speaker 1: population in the hands of a compactor and better qualified
50:29
Speaker 1: special committee. That committee is now far more than the
50:33
Speaker 1: Council of any other of its delegated committees. The active
50:38
Speaker 1: government of the world developed from an almost invisible germ
50:43
Speaker 1: of town planning that came obscurely into existence in Europe
50:48
Speaker 1: or America. The question is still in dispute somewhere in
50:53
Speaker 1: the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Its work, the continual,
50:58
Speaker 1: active planning and replanning of the world as a place
51:01
Speaker 1: of human habitation, is now, so to speak, the collaborative
51:06
Speaker 1: material activity of the race, the spontaneous, disorderly spreadings and
51:12
Speaker 1: recessions of populations, as aimless and mechanical as the trickling
51:17
Speaker 1: of split water, which was the substance of history for
51:21
Speaker 1: endless years, giving rise to congestions, here, to chronic, devastating wars,
51:27
Speaker 1: and everywhere to a discomfort and disorderliness that was at
51:32
Speaker 1: its best only picturesque. Is at an end. Men spread now,
51:38
Speaker 1: with the whole power of the race to aid them,
51:42
Speaker 1: into every available region of the earth. Their cities are
51:45
Speaker 1: no longer tethered to running water and the proximity of cultivation.
51:50
Speaker 1: Their plans are no longer affected by strategic considerations or
51:55
Speaker 1: thoughts of social insecurity. The aeroplane and the nearly costless
52:00
Speaker 1: mobile car have abolished trade roads. A common language and
52:05
Speaker 1: a universal law have abolished a thousand restraining inconveniences, And
52:10
Speaker 1: so an astonishing dispersal of habitations has begun. One may
52:15
Speaker 1: live anywhere, and so it is that our cities are
52:19
Speaker 1: now true social gatherings, each with a character of its
52:23
Speaker 1: own and distinctive interests of its own, and most of
52:26
Speaker 1: them with a common occupation. They lie out in the
52:30
Speaker 1: former deserts, these long wasted sun baths of the race.
52:34
Speaker 1: They tower amidst eternal snows. They hide in remote islands
52:39
Speaker 1: and basque on broad lagoons. For a time, the whole
52:43
Speaker 1: tendency of mankind was to desert the river valleys in
52:46
Speaker 1: which the race had been cradled for half a million years.
52:50
Speaker 1: But now that the war against flies had been waged
52:53
Speaker 1: so successfully that this pestilential branch of life is nearly extinct.
53:00
Speaker 1: There returning thither with a renewed appetite for gardens laced
53:04
Speaker 1: by water courses, for pleasant living amidst islands, and house
53:08
Speaker 1: boats and bridges, and for nocturnal lanterns reflected by the sea.
53:13
Speaker 1: Man who is ceasing to be an agricultural animal becomes
53:17
Speaker 1: more and more a builder, a traveler, and a maker,
53:21
Speaker 1: how much he ceases to be a cultivator of the soil.
53:24
Speaker 1: The returns of the Redistribution Committee showed every year the
53:29
Speaker 1: work of our scientific laboratories increases the productivity and simplifies
53:35
Speaker 1: the labour of those who work upon the soil. And
53:38
Speaker 1: the food now of the whole world is produced by
53:41
Speaker 1: less than one per cent of its population, a percentage
53:45
Speaker 1: which still tends to decrease. Far few people are needed
53:49
Speaker 1: upon the land than training and proclivity disposed towards it,
53:53
Speaker 1: And as a consequence of this excess of human attention,
53:57
Speaker 1: the garden side of life, the creation of groves and
54:01
Speaker 1: lawns and vast regions of beautiful flowers has expanded enormously
54:06
Speaker 1: and continues to expand, for as agricultural method intensifies and
54:12
Speaker 1: the quota is raised, one farm association after another, availing
54:17
Speaker 1: itself of the nineteen seventy five regulations, elects to produce
54:22
Speaker 1: a public garden and a pleasance in the place of
54:26
Speaker 1: its former fields, and the area of freedom and beauty
54:30
Speaker 1: is increased, and the chemist's triumphs of synthesis, which could
54:35
Speaker 1: now give us an entirely artificial food, remain largely in abeyance,
54:40
Speaker 1: because it is so much more pleasant and interesting to
54:44
Speaker 1: eat natural produce, and to grow such things upon the
54:47
Speaker 1: soil each year adds to the variety of our fruits
54:51
Speaker 1: and the delightfulness of our flowers